death investigation in America - PBS Frontline investigation

Popular television shows portray death investigators as high-tech sleuths wielding the most sophisticated tools of 21st century science. An unprecedented collaborative investigation by FRONTLINE, ProPublica and NPR found a very different reality: A dysfunctional system in which there are few standards, little oversight, and the mistakes are literally buried.

forensic pathologists: graphic novel-style

Blood on the table - the greatest cases of New York's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Evans C 2008

For almost a century New York City's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner has presided over the dead in the greatest city in the world. Over the years, the OCME has endured everything - political upheavals, ghastly murders, bloody gang wars, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and nonstop battles for power and influence - and remains the final authority in cases of sudden, unexplained, or violent deaths.

Founded in 1918 as an attempt to halt corruption within the coroner industry, the OCME has been marked by decades of both triumphant technological advancements and all-too-human failures, to evolve into its modern-day incarnation bearing an average case load of more than fifteen thousand suspicious deaths a year. This is the behind-the-scenes chronicle of public service and private vendettas, of blood in the streets and backroom bloodbaths, and of the criminal cases that made history and headlines. From crimes of passion to tragic acts of fate, the New York City OCME has seen - and solved - almost every crime imaginable. And it has survived to become the foremost forensics lab in the world.

homicide in America

The homicide rate in the USA is going down, and an interesting article, 'A crime puzzle' describes the trend over the last century (or so).

Whatever the reason, the downward trend of violent crime in the U.S. seems consistent with our longer history, although still high by first-world standards. It’s the upsurge of violent crime starting in the early 1960s that is now ending that remains the larger puzzle.

Professor Claude Fischer. A crime puzzle. 2/5/2011 The Public Intellectual